As soon as there was the first wave, there was the first surfer. All you needed
was a piece of driftwood, or a block of ice -- and you were off, you were riding.
They were hooked, man, they were hooked – they couldn’t stop. And they just
passed it on and passed it on, handed that surf gene down all the way through
the days. Up ‘til recent times, you had your old dudes, your “hang six” cats, these
old guys that used to lay down with huge, humongous boards. These guys were
the pioneers. But nobody saw what surfing could really be until Big Z did it.
Who was Big Z? You’re asking the right guy, you got that far. Z is everything. Big
Z is surfing. There may as well not have been an ocean before Z. They invented
the ocean for him. He lived so hard because he wasn’t afraid to live, and he
wasn’t afraid to die. He came to Antarctica when I was just a kid. Man, it was the
biggest thing that ever happened here. And suddenly there he was. Just floating
over the water, just hovering, like weightless. He could have walked up to
anyone…and he walks right up to me. And he gives me this awesome, one of a
kind Big Z necklace. Then he tells me, “No matter what, find a way, ‘cause that’s
what winners do.” He was the greatest. Everyone looked up to him, respected
him, loved him. And one day… one day I’m gonna be just like him.
– Cody Maverick, up-and-coming surfer and
star of Surf’s Up
1
SYNOPSIS
Surf’s Up is an animated action-comedy that delves behind the scenes of the
high-octane world of competitive surfing. The film profiles teenage Rockhopper
penguin Cody Maverick (Shia LaBeouf), an up-and-coming surfer, as he enters
his first pro competition. Followed by a camera crew to document his
experiences, Cody leaves his family and home in Shiverpool, Antarctica to travel
to Pen Gu Island for the Big Z Memorial Surf Off. Along the way, Cody meets
Sheboygan surfer Chicken Joe (Jon Heder), famous surf promoter Reggie
Belafonte (James Woods), surf talent scout Mikey Abromowitz (Mario Cantone),
and spirited lifeguard Lani Aliikai (Zooey Deschanel), all of whom recognize
Cody’s passion for surfing, even if it’s a bit misguided at times. Cody believes
that winning will bring him the admiration and respect he desires, but when he
unexpectedly comes face-to-face with a washed-up old surfer (Jeff Bridges),
Cody begins to find his own way, and discovers that a true winner isn’t always
the one who comes in first.
Columbia Pictures Presents a Sony Pictures Animation film, Surf’s Up. Directed
by Ash Brannon and Chris Buck. Screenplay by Don Rhymer and Ash Brannon &
Chris Buck & Christopher Jenkins. With a story by Christopher Jenkins and
Christian Darren. Produced by Christopher Jenkins. Music by Mychael Danna.
Co-produced by Lydia Bottegoni.
Imagery and animation by Sony Pictures
Imageworks, Inc. Credits are not final and subject to change.
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
Surf’s Up is a fresh, fun animated comedy that immerses audiences in the
competitive world of surfing penguins. For producer Christopher Jenkins, that
hilarious starting point led to a breakthrough in how to present the story of upand-coming surfer Cody Maverick. “The notion of surfing penguins really got me
2
thinking. What if, instead of being a straightforward fantasy narrative, Surf’s Up
went into the world of animation with a hypothetically authentic camera, as if it
were taping live interviews and ostensibly no script?” says Jenkins. “What would
these surfing penguins tell us if they were given a chance? From there it was a
short step to realizing the potential of this coupling – the imagination of animation
paired with the realism and immediacy of today’s real-life video.”
Directors Ash Brannon (co-director of Toy Story 2) and Chris Buck (director of
Tarzan) quickly realized the cleverness in the idea: relying on the conventions
and style of reality television and documentary filmmaking, Surf’s Up would have
an immediacy and relevance that set it apart from the pack. Using that technique,
the directors brought into focus the characters, story, and art direction – the heart
of the film.
That intimate cinematic style perfectly supported the story that developed from
the inspiring concept of surfing penguins devised by veteran animation
executives Sandra Rabins and Penney Finkelman Cox.
At the center of the story, the filmmakers placed the relationship between Cody,
a young, up-and-coming surfer who thinks that becoming a champion will bring
him the respect he feels he deserves, and Big Z, the onetime legendary surfer
who everybody thinks has passed on, but in fact has been living alone as a
hermit for the past decade. “Having lost his father, Cody is clearly looking for a
father figure, and the legend of Big Z had filled that void; because Z was a
champion, that’s what Cody thought he wanted to be, too. But when Cody enters
Z’s life, Z is forced to come to terms with his past and face life as a champion
whose glory days are over,” says director Ash Brannon. “When Cody finds out
that Z is still alive, they naturally fall into those father-son roles – the good and
the challenging – and both realize that nothing could matter less than a trophy.
It’s their passion for being out on the waves that counts most.”
3
To absorb audiences into Cody’s world, every detail had to be appropriate to the
experience. “One of our main goals was to take the viewer to a tropical location,”
said director Chris Buck. “We wanted to recreate that feeling you get when you
step off the plane in a place like Tahiti or Hawaii, and you’re hit by that amazing
scent and air and even by how different the light is. You really know that you’re
somewhere special.”
An ensemble of talented actors form the voice cast of Surf’s Up. Leading the way
is Shia LaBeouf, who takes on the role of Cody Maverick. He is joined by fourtime Academy Award® nominee Jeff Bridges, playing Big Z; Zooey Deschanel as
Lani; Jon Heder as Chicken Joe; James Woods as Reggie; Mario Cantone as
Mikey; and Diedrich Bader as Tank.
Because of the behind-the-scenes nature of the film, it was necessary that the
characters speak in a natural way – including improvised and overlapping
dialogue. In a typical animation voiceover session, actors are alone in the booth
as they record their characters’ lines. This allows the animators, editors and
sound designers more flexibility in splicing together different performances. For
Surf’s Up, the filmmakers made the highly unconventional choice to record many
scenes with several actors in the booth at once. “A performance is completely
different when you have the other actors there in the room with you – you get a
sense of what they’re doing and react to each other in a natural way,” says
LaBeouf. “For a movie like Surf’s Up – which is supposed to go behind the
scenes, showing what happens in the natural environment – it was essential, and
I’m glad we had the creative freedom to find the magic.”
Jeff Bridges notes that when he was acting in the recording booth alongside
LaBeouf, the two could not help but mirror the relationship that their characters
have on-screen. “I have daughters that are Shia’s age – I think because of that, I
naturally kind of fell into that. Also, when I was his age, I was an actor – I had a
4
lot of the excitement he’s going through now. It was terrific to work with him; he’s
a great improviser and he was having fun doing it.”
This technique paid off in several scenes, especially when Big Z and Cody
Maverick cooperate on shaping a surfboard. “The actors were more comfortable
recording dialogue with other actors in the film, and it comes through in the
performance,” Buck said. “Jeff, Shia, and Zooey were brilliant in playing off of
and working with each other. They really took ownership of their characters.”
The result is a film that reinforces Sony Pictures Animation’s philosophy of
promoting the filmmakers’ creativity and vision. Following the division’s
successful launch last fall with the animated hit Open Season, Sony Pictures
Animation has proven to be a home for great talent. “As a surfer and a dad, I
knew how much fun it would be to share those experiences with an audience in
our film’s unique style,” says Yair Landau, President of Sony Pictures Digital and
Vice Chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment. “Over the past five years, we
have built a story-driven animation studio powered by Imageworks’ 15 years of
visual effects artistry.
That’s all on the screen in Surf’s Up, a beautiful
demonstration of who we are and where animation is headed.”
“Surf’s Up is a gorgeous production that enables audiences to share the lives of
delightful characters,” adds Sandra Rabins, Executive Vice President of Sony
Pictures Animation. “Every detail of their world can be seen and enjoyed, from
the smallest grain of sand to the magnificent beauty of the setting sun. It’s like
going to the beach without getting wet!”
Surf’s Up is an example of the symbiotic relationship between the filmmakers at
Sony Pictures Animation, which developed the project, and Sony Pictures
Imageworks, which brought their vision to life. David Schaub, the film’s senior
animation supervisor, points out that even though the animators of Surf’s Up use
a computer instead of a pencil, the film is no less hand-crafted. “What appears to
5
be spontaneous in animation is a result of creating each performance down to
the last little eye-dart. Every little nuance and detail is toiled over to assure that
the message and performance come across clearly.”
ABOUT THE STORY
Cody Maverick, the hottest (and only) up-and-coming surfer in Shiverpool,
Antarctica, has always dreamt of something bigger than a job at the fish factory,
even as his unsupportive family – mom Edna and older brother Glen – do not
understand why he has to be different from everyone else. But Cody has always
wanted to be a winner at something and he’s determined to take to heart the
lesson that the late, great surfer, Big Z, imparted before going out for his final
wave: find a way, because that’s what winners do. And Cody finds his way:
hitching a ride on overcaffeinated shorebird surf scout Mikey Abromowitz’s
whale, Cody heads for Pen Gu island and the 10th Annual Big Z Memorial SurfOff. Along the way, he meets Chicken Joe, a goofball surf nut hailing from
Sheboygan, Wisconsin, who learned the sport by riding the icy waters and small
waves of the Great Lakes.
No sooner have Cody and Joe arrived than Cody falls head over heels for Lani
Aliikai, the beguiling surf beach lifeguard on Pen Gu. After an awkward
introduction and an even more awkward request for a date, Cody escapes down
the beach to save himself further embarrassment… only to run into Tank “The
Shredder” Evans, king of the nine previous Big Z Memorial Surf Offs, who is
using a monument to Z for target practice. Cody is about to start a fight with the
enormous bully when Reggie steps between them and turns the fight into a mini
surf-off… which Cody quickly loses in an embarrassing wipeout.
6
Lani brings the embarrassed (and unconscious) surfer to the home of her friend,
Geek, who quickly revives Cody. Soon after, Cody discovers the truth: this weird
dude is his idol, Big Z.
The questions come quickly: Why is he alive? How did he get here? What really
happened on that last wave? But none of that is important now; the bigger
question is: Can Z help him win the championship? Z, frustrated by Cody’s poor
surfing, blurts out, “You want to learn to surf the right way, you gotta make your
own board.”
Cody’s impatience gets the better of him once again – and despite Big Z’s
guiding hand, Cody makes a terrible board. Cody, unable to admit his mistakes,
misses the point of Z’s lessons. Needing a break from his mentor, Cody heads
off into the jungle – and runs smack into Lani, the pretty lifeguard who rescued
him. She invites him to one of her favorite places – the lava tubes that run
underneath the island. After an exciting, playful afternoon exploring the tubes,
Cody returns to Z’s beach and repeats the steps that Z taught him earlier. This
time, ready to heed Z’s lessons, Cody creates a perfect board. Z is pleased with
what Cody has created, but Cody, still preoccupied with the need to win, asks
only how many points you get for being “in the tube” – inside the curl of a wave.
Z continues his teaching – first making Cody practice his surfing on land, and
then – finally! – in the water. For the first time in 10 years, Z takes a board and
dives into the ocean. Z is happier than he’s been in years – until Cody asks Z to
watch him surf during the competition the next day. Z is disappointed – if Cody
still wants to compete, has he been listening at all? But Cody is convinced this is
just an excuse for whatever happened ten years earlier. And it’s true: Z says that
he couldn’t win against Tank, and couldn’t face going back to the beach as a
loser, so he chose to disappear. The young penguin, angry with Z, walks off, not
caring what his mentor thinks about the competition.
7
Cody returns to the surf beach to compete – and shocks the crowd as he shows
he is no longer the “wipeout kid” (in Reggie’s words) that he was three days ago.
With the confidence from his lessons with Z, he is simply taking the waves as
they come. As the finals near, he will need to rise to the challenge and prove to
Big Z, Lani, and himself what a true winner really is.
ABOUT THE CHARACTERS
CODY MAVERICK
Shiverpool, Antarctica native Cody Maverick is an undersized Rockhopper
penguin with an oversized yearning to be a winner. Because he thinks a surfing
trophy will bring him the love and respect he knows he deserves, Cody is
determined to do whatever it takes to win the 10 th Annual Big Z Memorial SurfOff.
Cody’s idol is Big Z, a renowned surfer who once had everything Cody wants.
Big Z was popular, successful, and adored by millions. Even though Z never
returned from his final wave in a competition ten years ago, his legend has only
grown in the young penguin’s mind. Still, Cody has a lot to learn – including that
being a winner doesn’t necessarily mean taking home a trophy.
Shia LaBeouf leads the cast as the 17-year-old Cody. He notes that while the
ultimate moral of Surf’s Up may be “follow your dreams,” the emphasis should be
on the follow and not necessarily the dream. “It’s not the destination; it’s the
journey,” LaBeouf says. “It’s a happier way to live.”
The heart of the film, according to LaBeouf, is the relationship between Cody and
Big Z, the onetime great who took his chance to disappear from the rest of the
world. “They’re two loners who become best friends when they’re forced
8
together,” he says. “It’s reciprocal; Big Z can teach Cody about the joy of surfing,
but Cody can also show Z the path back to the life he’s missed out on.”
That onscreen relationship was mirrored off-screen by LaBeouf and Jeff Bridges.
“In the booth, Jeff is all about creating the scene, as if he were on a live-action
set,” says LaBeouf. “He’ll mime the scene – he’ll say, ‘OK, here’s the coconut, so
don’t come over here; if you step in the wrong place, you’re going to trip’ – and
I’m thinking, ‘Oh, I’ve got to remember that’s there.’ And at first, you think it’s
insane, but then the scene begins and Jeff will say two or three words and we
have a rollercoaster of emotion, all spawned by Jeff.”
“Creating a character that’s fifty percent me, fifty percent the animator, was an
interesting experience,” says LaBeouf. “I’m proud of how Cody came out – and
it’s completely a dual effort. To see him move – with detail from feather to feather
– he comes to life.”
EZEKIEL “BIG Z” TOPANGA
The world of surfing had no bigger star than Big Z. With his chiseled physique,
self-confident air, and sense of fun, he rode the crest of the surfing world,
bringing the sport into the mainstream. His name was synonymous with surfing
until his last competition ten years ago, when he went out for his final wave and
never came back.
Since then, Z has grown from a star into a legend, thanks to the marketing
genius of scheming talent manager, Reggie Belafonte. Under Reggie’s greedy
eye for attention, Big Z’s legend has become a veritable industry of trinkets and
tchotchkes that couldn’t be further from the life of surfing he stood for.
9
“I surfed quite a bit in high school,” says Jeff Bridges, who plays the legendary
surfer. “Then I stopped for about 20 years. I’ve just started to take it up again. I’m
fair; my chops are coming back. At first, the thing that I feared was the
temperature – the water is so cold out there – but with the wet suits they have
today, the cold is no problem. It’s the paddling – I have about 10 paddles in me
and I have to rest for awhile.”
When Big Z went out for a final wave, he took his opportunity to disappear rather
than disappoint the fans who expected him to win every time. “He’s dead to the
world – almost as if he’s spending his whole life asleep,” says Bridges. “From out
of nowhere comes this kid – and at first, he’s irritated, but he can’t help but find
himself waking up to life and all the wonderful experiences out there. Cody gets
him out on the water, which is what Big Z loved first.”
Surf’s Up presented a special opportunity for Bridges to collaborate with a close
friend. “There was a scene set around a campfire, and I thought, ‘Well, maybe
Z’s got a ukulele,” says Bridges. “The directors thought that was a great idea, so I
threw it to my buddy, John Goodwin – he’s my oldest friend; we go back to fourth
grade – and a half-hour later, he’s got the song. Boom – it’s in the movie, and
I’ve got a huge smile on my face.”
“Ash and Chris were very much in sync,” adds Bridges of the film’s directors.
“Because they complemented each other so well, it made for a great flow of
ideas – any input you had was encouraged.” Working with his fellow actors also
aided the creative process: “I’ve done animated films in the past, and usually
you’re in front of a mic alone,” he says. “For this film, we got to play together.”
LANI ALIIKAI
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Lani is a beguiling young gentoo penguin whose expressive eyes can scold or
soothe without a word being spoken. An excellent surfer in her own right, she
doesn’t squander her abilities proving herself to others. Instead, as a lifeguard
on the world’s best surfing beach, Lani loves her job rescuing little wipeouts and
big showoffs, including Cody. Also, as Big Z’s niece, she is the only one who
knows that he is still alive and has helped keep his secret for 10 years.
Like the rest of the cast, Zooey Deschanel, who plays Lani, enjoyed the unusual
recording sessions. “For the scenes where Lani is carrying Cody, the directors
had sandbags for me to carry – you can hear the exertion in my voice. It was
very aerobic.”
Deschanel’s favorite contribution to the film may be her role as the inspiration for
Arnold, a baby penguin that’s constantly falling in the water just so he can be
rescued by Lani, the object of his crush. At first, the character didn’t exist –
Deschanel had one line about rescuing a penguin chick. “I ad-libbed his name –
Arnold,” she says. “Chris Jenkins asked me why he was named Arnold, and I
said, ‘He just looks like an Arnold.’ Then I said something about too much
passing out too often not being good for the brain… and the next time I came in,
there was a whole character – and it flourished without me being there! The seed
of the idea sprung forth from magic.”
“One of the things that made me so excited about the movie was how real the
waves looked,” adds Deschanel. “It’s so fresh – it reminds me of Step into Liquid
and Endless Summer and the other great surfing documentaries. I’ve never seen
anything like it in animation.”
CHICKEN JOE
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Chicken Joe just might be the only Midwestern farm rooster with a shot at
winning the 10th Annual Big Z Memorial Surf Off. The humongous crashing
waves of Pen Gu Island are a far cry from those lapping against the Great Lakes
shores, but this lovable oddball is happy anywhere there are friends and
surfboards. Chicken Joe and Cody Maverick become fast friends, recognizing in
each other the shared experience of being the outsider in their respective home
towns.
Jon Heder takes on the voice of this lighthearted surf nut. Despite his laid-back
demeanor, Chicken Joe’s the one who’s got it all figured out. “There’s much more
than meets the eye to Chicken Joe – he’s a smart chicken,” says Heder. “He’s
got his act together – he’s there to have fun. He just loves to surf – he doesn’t
really care about competition.
“There’s a certain carefree feel to Chicken Joe that I relate to,” he adds. “I
remember being a kid on the basketball court – I just wanted to goof around and
have fun shooting the ball, but all my friends just wanted to win. They all got mad
at me.”
“Chicken Joe definitely has Midwestern family values,” Heder continues. “He
loves that feeling of family and he’s friendly to everyone. He forms a fast
brotherly bond with Cody, whether or not Cody sees it that way. Chicken Joe
sees a guy who’s a little bit lost and realizes that they’re going to need each other
while they’re on Pen Gu.”
“When you voice an animated character, not only are you voice acting, you’re
also practicing your improv skills,” Heder continues. “It’s always a weird
experience to sit in a booth with the headphones on and imagine yourself in a
place as serene as Pen Gu… and as a chicken.”
12
“The great thing about animation is that anything you can imagine, you can bring
to life,” concludes Heder, who is very familiar with the medium. His brother was
an animator with Sony Pictures Imageworks until recently and the actor himself
studied the subject in college before focusing on his acting career. “It was like the
designers just thought, ‘What would be the perfect place to go surfing and relax?’
– and they designed exactly what they wanted: the beaches, the waves, the
jungle, just the place you want to go for vacation.”
REGGIE BELAFONTE
Manipulative otter Reggie Belafonte didn’t shed a tear when his surfing prodigy,
Big Z Topanga, disappeared into the Pen Gu Island waves. The scheming
manager who turned Big Z into a goldmine was starting to make even more
money from heir apparent Tank “The Shredder” Evans, and the big bucks keep
rolling in as Big Z’s fans turn their devotion into commemorating the legend. He’s
already got his eye on young up-and-coming surfer Cody Maverick’s earning
potential, but meanwhile, he’s happy to take credit for things he had nothing to do
with creating. Two-time Academy Award® nominee James Woods plays the
role.
MIKEY ABROMOWITZ
Mikey Abromowitz is a small, stressed-out shorebird with a rapid-fire punchline
for every mess thrown at him by life and his boss, Reggie Belafonte. Originally a
talent scout for the dryer and more flamboyant world of musical theater, Mikey is
always just one ulcer away from discovering the next big thing in competitive
surfing.
13
For Mario Cantone, the chance to play the hapless shorebird was “a blast. He’s
impatient and miserable and hilarious – a great character to investigate.”
Cantone describes the process in the recording booth: “First you run through it as
written, and then you start branching off. And then you branch off the branch – it
just keeps building. Ash and Chris were very encouraging – they just let me go
and they sat there and laughed for three hours, which is great when you’re a
sick, conditioned comic like me who’s always looking for approval.”
As the comic foil to James Woods’s Reggie Belafonte, Cantone spent a lot of
time in the booth with Woods. “He has so many stories,” says Cantone. “You just
want to sit there and listen, even though it’s intimidating.” Why intimidating?
“Because it’s James Woods! It finally got to the point where I was comfortable,
but he has a presence, he’s brilliant, and he’s James Woods – intimidating.”
TANK EVANS
Winning is everything to the swaggering emperor penguin known as Tank “The
Shredder” Evans. Of course, he’s a genuinely great surfer, which he’d have to be
to win the Big Z Memorial Surf Off nine times in a row, but there’s no room for
anything else in the brawny athlete’s life – except for making special time for
polishing his trophies.
Actor Diedrich Bader says, “Surf’s Up is a tragedy about the greatest penguin
surfer in history – Tank ‘The Shredder’ Evans – and the challenges that befall
him. A handsome emperor penguin, enormous and threatening, he experiences
a fall from grace.”
How does that fall come about? Perhaps something to do with one Cody
Maverick? “Never heard of him,” says Bader.
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He kids, but Bader took his role seriously – to the point of attending surf camp in
Malibu. “I learned just how difficult surfing is,” he says. “I was up for maybe two
or three seconds. That was good enough for me – been there, done that! Now
I’m just like Tank, ‘cause I was up for two or three seconds,” he says,
sarcastically.
Bader says despite the fact that it’s easy to call Tank a bad guy, his son showed
him a different way to see the character. “I described the story to him, and he
asked me which character I played. When I told him I played the bad guy, he
said, ‘No, Daddy – he’s not a bad guy, he just wants something else.’ All he
wants is to be left alone with his trophies. I think if somebody told him that there
was such a thing as a trophy shop, surfing would be over.”
“When we started production, Tank was a stereotypical bully,” says Buck. “We
had to keep pushing and pushing to find something different. Our head of story,
Jeff Ranjo, cracked the weird side of Tank and took him to another place.”
EDNA MAVERICK
Life in Shiverpool is hard for a widowed mother penguin, left to raise two sons in
a town where the only aspiration is a job higher up the fish pile at the factory.
Edna loves both of her children equally, but she finds it a lot easier to raise
Cody’s older sibling Glen than the high-spirited Cody. She lives in hope that
Cody will outgrow his surfing phase so he can settle down and get a proper job,
just like Glen and every other penguin.
The film’s script coordinator, Dana L. Belben, first voiced the role as a scratch
track – a temporary track to lay over the storyboards as a means of seeing how a
scene might play. “She just nailed the character; she hit it out of the park,” says
15
director Ash Brannon. “It was so real that when it came time to cast the role, we
just said to her, ‘Well, it’s got to be you.’”
GLEN MAVERICK
Glen is Cody’s older brother in the Maverick’s Shiverpool household. The two
Rockhopper penguins are separated by a mere 14 seconds, but that’s more than
enough to give Glen license to bully his undersized sibling. When they were kids,
Glen always gobbled down more than his fair share of regurgitated fish. Now that
they’re almost adults, Glen belittles Cody’s dreams of getting anything more from
life than the small comforts of a warm igloo and something smelly on the table
when he comes home from work. Brian Posehn, perhaps best-known for his
recurring role as Kevin on “Just Shoot Me,” takes on the role.
ARNOLD, KATEY and SMUDGE
Arnold is a mischievous little penguin chick whose calculated “drownings” say
more about his desire to keep getting “rescued” by Lani than his inability to swim
– especially since penguins can swim almost from the time they hatch. Six-yearold Reed Buck, son of director Chris Buck, provides his voice.
Katey is Arnold’s best friend. She is a precocious and strong-willed penguin who
has very firm opinions about Tank Evans, Reggie Belafonte, and why the world
of competitive surfing is not just for boys. Reese Elowe, the eight-year-old
daughter of producer Christopher Jenkins, plays the role.
Smudge is Katey’s younger brother. His near-constant silence belies the fact that
Smudge, like all little kids, is taking in much more information than those around
him realize – until he blurts things out at the most inopportune times. Jack P.
Ranjo, 6, the son of head of story Jeff Ranjo, takes on Smudge.
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THE PEN GU-ANS
Known for their ability to set clever traps in the jungle, the Pen Gu-ans are the
native clan of penguins on the island of Pen Gu. This hyperactive species of
birds move a little faster than your average penguin, a characteristic accentuated
by their erratic, staccato, and incomprehensible way of talking. They also have a
fondness for eating chicken.
ROB MACHADO, KELLY SLATER, AND SAL MASEKELA
Champion surfers Rob Machado and Kelly Slater, along with renowned sports
commentator Sal Masekela, appear in Surf’s Up as themselves in penguin form.
Artists captured their personalities and mannerisms, but Rob, Kelly, and Sal
provided their own voices for total authenticity.
ABOUT THE ANIMATION
As any member of the voice cast would say, creating the character only begins
with the voice. When the actor has laid down the track, the torch is passed to the
talented team of character animators at Sony Pictures Imageworks, the digital
production studio where Surf’s Up was made.
David Schaub, the senior animation supervisor, says the film’s conceit – that it is
a
documentary
or
reality-television
show
–
informed
the
characters’
performances. “The illusion in Surf’s Up is that the camera just happens to be
there to capture the moment,” he says. “In animation, we rarely get the
opportunity to play out such long, extended performances, where characters
carry the shot completely. It is an animator’s dream come true!
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“The animation style of Surf’s Up is caricatured reality,” Schaub adds. “The realworld dynamics are pushed to caricature without breaking the fundamental rules
of physics and gravity.”
Art director/character designer Sylvain Deboissy was inspired by the same idea.
“When you think about it, penguins are a caricature of humans – we share the
same silhouette,” he says. “Audiences identify with them. In designing the overall
look of our characters, it was our goal to strike a balance between a realistic look
and anthropomorphizing their characteristics. We gave our penguins just enough
unique qualities to make them stand out in a crowd.”
Deboissy says that one of the greatest challenges from a design point of view
was Lani, the beguiling lifeguard. “She’s smart and tough, but very feminine,” he
says. “The gentoo penguin has a much more elongated silhouette than the
others. In addition, we wanted her to have very expressive eyes.”
Another challenge solved by the eyes came when designing Big Z. “Because we
see him as both Geek and Big Z, we couldn’t give too much away, but we also
had to make sure that there was an unmistakable match.”
Other characters had direct inspirations. “Chris Buck knew exactly what he
wanted Chicken Joe to look like,” says Deboissy. “He provided the template and
we stayed true to that vision throughout the process – though his torso is a little
more elongated, to make him believable as a surfer.”
With the design in place, four supervising animators took the lead on Surf’s Up –
Peter Nash, Renato Dos Anjos, Chad Stewart, and Chris Hurtt and their teams
were responsible for animating entire sequences rather than specializing in a
particular character. Working closely with each other and with Schaub, the
18
directors, and producer, the four supervisors met every day to compare notes,
watch each others’ scenes, and offer suggestions.
“Each of us comes from a different perspective and naturally looks for different
things in the performances and animation,” Stewart says. “We meet together and
look over the work and sometimes one will notice something that another didn’t.
The animation is stronger for it.”
Nash was responsible for a portion of the Shiverpool sequence of the film and
got to know Cody very well. “A lot of the subtlety of Surf’s Up is a character
saying one thing but meaning another – it’s all about the subtext,” he says. “We’ll
have a character position his body a certain way, or perhaps give it away with
their eyes – maybe a left-right eye dart that shows they’re thinking about
something while trying to be composed. Even something like a few quick blinks
can show that the character is off-kilter.”
One example of this idea comes during the Shiverpool sequence, when Cody
puts on a brave face when talking about his father, who died when Cody was a
small penguin. “He’s confronted with a deeply emotional feeling for him and he’s
trying to play a tough guy, so he overcompensates,” says Nash. In addition to the
vocal inflection given the lines by Shia LaBeouf, Nash’s animation gives several
telltale clues that belie his façade. “Cody’s taken off-guard by the question and
raises his eyebrows, then quickly goes back to being stern. Something even
more subtle I did was to dilate his pupils just at the moment that he’s hit with the
question.” Finally, after giving his answer, Cody, who had been looking away,
gives a quick glance back at the camera, as if to see if the interviewer bought his
line – and gives away his game.
To come up with these moments that bring the scene to life, Nash – like all
character animators – videotaped himself saying the lines and trying different
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facial expressions. “You don’t have to be a good actor, but you do have to do
several takes to find the nugget you can take,” he says.
According to Nash, the animators went out of the way to animate Cody at the end
of the film differently than they did at the beginning. “At the beginning, Cody is
headstrong, confident, a strong personality – a good kid, but a typical teenage
kid,” he says. “At the end, there’s a scene where he’s being interviewed – if you
watch Cody, everything about him is relaxed. There’s no overcompensation, no
front he’s putting up. Actually, he’s so subtle, he was hard to animate – it seems
like the character isn’t doing much, but you have to make it convincing.”
Animating the otter Reggie Belafonte – who fancies himself as the puppeteer
who pulls the strings – required a completely different approach. While all the
other characters play their cards close to the vest, Reggie is loud and emotional
– while thinking he’s a master manipulator. “He projects everything three times
as much as everybody else, but thinks he has a poker face – that’s what makes
him so funny,” says Nash.
Deboissy, the character designer, says, “Looks are very deceiving with Reggie.
We purposely designed our villain to be very cute and cuddly.”
That kind of subtext is woven throughout the film. For Renato Dos Anjos, one
particularly memorable scene is the “making the board” sequence, in which Big Z
encourages Cody to shape his own surfboard. “That scene is all about Cody and
Z,” says Dos Anjos. “Cody is getting frustrated by waiting, and Z is taking his time
to carve the board slowly. Z is trying to teach him to take it easy and enjoy the
process, but Cody is impatient to get to the end result.”
“One of the hardest things to do in animation is to make sure it looks like the
character is listening,” says Dos Anjos. “We used all the techniques on that shot
– it’s so long, and Cody has to do so much listening, that we pulled all the rabbits
20
out of our hat.” One example from the scene: Cody keeps trying to make eye
contact with Z, who is engrossed in carving the board.
“When I was storyboarding the sequence, I based it on real experiences with my
grandpa,” says story artist Jason Lethcoe. “The scene brought back memories of
working with him in his garage. I would fool around with the tools and the wood
scraps and he would give me advice on how to build something the right way.”
For editor Ivan Bilancio, listening to the recorded voices of Jeff Bridges and Shia
LaBeouf brought home the fact that he was editing a film that was, in some ways,
very much like a documentary. “The paradigm of recording the actors was to let
the actors improvise. From there, we would find the pieces to help create the
sequence. When I heard Jeff and Shia playing off each other, I couldn’t wait to
cut it. It was all in the performance,” he says. “Just like a team shooting a
documentary, we didn’t know what we were going to get before the performance.
That was the first sequence we were able to do that way, and once we did that,
we found that the technique lent itself to the rest of the film.”
On the other hand, not every character is about subtext and hidden emotion:
Chicken Joe wears his heart on his sleeve.
“He’s totally sincere,” says Dos
Anjos. “He’s an innocent. Even when the Pen Gu-ans put him in a pot to cook
him for dinner, he says, ‘These guys are my friends,’ and he means it. He’ll do
anything for his friends.”
“When we started on Chicken Joe, I think we all thought that he wasn’t too bright,
but Ash and Chris changed our focus and went towards innocence,” says Nash.
“He’s not dumb; he’s got old-soul wisdom.”
The animator who spent the most time getting to know Chicken Joe was Chad
Stewart. “When we first got started, we were trying a bunch of walks for all the
different characters,” he remembers. “It was a challenge for a long time to make
21
the penguins distinctive, since they are so similar in their coloring. When we got
to Chicken Joe, it was a chance to cut loose. About halfway through production,
we started working with Chicken Joe surfing, and that’s when things got really
different. It was a blast.”
In fact, Stewart was the character animator who headed up all of the surfing
sequences, regardless of which character was on the board. “I think it takes three
things to do great surfing animation: a good physical animator who really
understands weight, motion and physics; someone who is very technical and
understand all the ins and outs of the amazing wave rig that we have; and
someone who knows how to surf,” Stewart says. “While we’re not really surfing,
we had to make it look like our characters can surf at the pro level. In order to do
that, we had to spend many hours pouring over how Kelly Slater can launch
himself into the air, how Rob Machado can seemingly float over the face of the
wave, and any number of other surfing do’s and don’t’s.”
With regard to the physical animation, Stewart says each character was given a
distinctive surfing style, usually based on a real-life master of the sport. For
example, the animation team looked at footage of legendary big-wave surfer and
board shaper Greg Noll as a reference for Big Z – going so far as to mimic Noll’s
style in Z’s character animation. Similarly, shades of Kelly Slater can be seen in
Cody Maverick’s surfing, as can elements of Sunny Garcia’s riding in Tank’s.
On the other hand, Stewart found an unusual inspiration for Chicken Joe’s surf
style: roller disco. “I looked at the movie ‘Roll Bounce’ and thought it would be fun
if Chicken Joe was dancing and grooving along on the waves,” he says. “That
movie and other clips gave us the feel for his style at the very beginning.”
Of course, this meant that in order to be a good animator of surfing, the
animators – as Stewart indicated – had to be good surfers, too. “I used to surf
22
quite a bit and I still surf a decent amount,” he says. “We went out a couple of
times with the crew and just being out there gives you a different perspective.”
Of course, that’s just the physical animation. As Stewart mentioned, the
animators also had to have particular skill at technical animation – how the board
moves with the wave. “Since the waves are moving at 10 or 20 miles an hour, the
stage is moving through a space,” says Stewart. “Of course, not only is the
character surfing, but performing – there’s a scene taking place on the board.
You have to emote as well as perform physical moves on the water. You had to
be technical enough to use the tools of the wave rig – knowing that what you did
would affect the water. We had a lot of interaction between layout, animation,
and effects – even a simple wave could have enormous challenges.”
ABOUT THE WAVES
From the very beginning, it was clear that in order for Surf’s Up to catch its wave,
it was essential that the waves be just as believable as Cody and the other
inhabitants of Pen Gu Island. Dozens of creative talents, including visual effects
supervisor Rob Bredow, senior animation supervisor David Schaub, head of
layout James Williams, editor Ivan Bilancio, and digital producer Chris Juen,
analyzed videos, studied scientific references, and even took surfing lessons
while they applied their own considerable artistry to this daunting task. They also
tapped champion surfers like Kelly Slater and Rob Machado to add expert
authenticity. “Animating a surfer is inherently tricky, because you have to take
those moves and put them on top of a moving environment, often chasing the
surfer through the wave,” Schaub said. “Everything the surfer does is driving the
surfboard and the surfboard is tracking on the wave but the wave is moving
through space. So, there are a lot of variables.
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“If we were dealing with a ski slope or a snowboarding hill, it would be tricky
enough,” adds Schaub. “But we took those moves and then put them on top of a
moving environment, so we’re chasing the surfer through the wave throughout
the shot. You don’t want to make the two feel like they’re disconnected, because
everything the surfer does is driving the surfboard and the surfboard is tracking
on the wave, but the wave is moving through space.”
“Since the surfers and the water affect each other, a lot of our work was a
chicken-and-egg situation where neither one could really come first,” said Visual
effects supervisor Rob Bredow. “To manage that, we built tools much earlier on
than we normally would – things like a primitive version of the wake after the
surfboard, crude white water, a whole set of tools to block the shots – and then
went back to perfect everything.” Artists in each department developed a much
broader scope of familiarity than usual, often providing expertise honed on live
action elsewhere within Imageworks. “The entire team did an outstanding job,
and I think it really shows when you see it on the screen.”
Since the waves are just as central to the action as they are to the characters’
lives, production designer Paul Lasaine determined that the waves should deliver
an emotional impact beyond what photorealism could convey. “With the title of
Surf’s Up, we knew we had to create a wave that will make surfers ache to get
back into the ocean,” he says.
The process started with the Sony Pictures Imageworks crew studying the
scenes captured by such renowned artists as cinematographer John-Paul
Beeghly and nature photographer Frans Lanting to help determine what makes
each wave unique. They pored over videos of renowned surfers like Greg Knolls,
Sunny Garcia, Rob Machado, and Kelly Slater. They scrutinized such top surfing
documentaries as The Endless Summer (1966), Step Into Liquid (2003), Second
Thoughts (2004) and Riding Giants (2004) to better understand the sport and
what characteristics those movies shared. They became so familiar with
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legendary surfing spots – Tahiti’s Teahupo’o, Northern California’s Maverick’s
Point, Hawaii’s Banzai Pipeline – the lighting specialist teams named themselves
after famous waves.
To help capture what it feels like to take a board out, most of the Surf’s Up crew
also took surfing lessons and shot hours of reference video. Bredow even risked
an outing to Cortez Bank, where giant waves crash over a chain of underwater
mountains 100 miles out in the ocean from San Diego, California.
Bredow and digital producer Chris Juen were in charge of putting technology into
the service of the artists. Erick Miller, a wave setup lead at Imageworks, led the
development of the animation rig that made it possible to animate the surf
environments, a complex assignment that took about a year to complete. John
Clark led the wave animation that perfected the final result. “We wanted the
waves to feel real as well as look real, so we thought of the waves as characters
in their own right and created them accordingly,” Bredow said. “Each one can be
controlled and lit through a combination of physically correct and artistic controls
over each element.”
For the final imprimatur of realism, champion surfer Kelly Slater visited the studio
to critique the animators’ version of his natural habitat. He was given a stylus to
indicate his points on the screen, and the artists incorporated his guidance for the
finished product. “I could see it for two seconds and tell it fits properly,” Slater
says. “There are things that you have a feeling for, and if you see it and it’s
wrong, you’ll know it feels wrong even if you can’t understand why.”
Bredow says the time with Slater was invaluable. “It was pretty informative to sit
next to him and let him draw, to show us exactly where we still had a couple
things to work on. That was in addition to it being just a fun time to sit next to
Kelly Slater and look at our waves and have him say, yeah, that’s looking pretty
good.”
25
Much of the animation work required the creation of new technologies, since
each wave was built from the ocean floor up. “The waves meant the riggers had
to create basically a character that layout could animate and that effects could
work with, so a wave actually is a character that flowed over three departments
before it got to effects,” says supervising animator Chad Stewart. “That’s a little
scary but it worked out very well in this movie.”
ABOUT THE DESIGN
The world of Surf’s Up extends far beyond the waves, of course. Sand has to
react as characters walk across it, and it has to do so in different ways depending
on how wet it is. Trees and leaves must gently react to the tropical breeze. And
all of that has to go on behind the main action.
Production designer Paul Lasaine says that unlike most animated films, the
conceit of Surf’s Up required a design of a nearly real world. “Many CG films go
for a 2-D, old-school animation look,” he says. “For Surf’s Up, we had to go the
opposite way – we had to create near-reality. We didn’t want people to wonder if
we used real penguins, but if the world of Surf’s Up is a documentary, getting the
look of a documentary was very important.”
Lasaine says that to achieve that stylized real-world look, as a rule of thumb, the
design team shot for “70% reality” – pushing the real world by 30%. “One thing
we did was to take a known object and push its shape a little bit, in a subtle way.
For example, there’s a lot of bamboo in the film. In real life, bamboo is pretty
straight with a bit of a curve as it comes to a joint; we pushed those curves a bit,
but kept the texture.”
Another way the filmmakers achieve Surf’s Up’s reality show look is through the
use of “archival footage.” Imageworks accomplished this by manipulating the
26
animation so it would have the appearance of dating from 1920s black and white,
through the early color of the 1950s and ‘60s, 1970s 8mm film, 1980s 16mm film
and on to several looks common today. “We added lens distortion, imprecise
focus pulling, grain, limited depth of field, and all of the other characteristics
documentaries have because of how they’re shot,” Bredow said. “There’s more
grain at night, too, because that’s what happens when a documentary crew uses
the same film stock for day and night.”
Intriguingly, at least as much expertise and perfectionism went into degrading
footage as it did to create it in the first place. “It actually was a lot of fun to add all
kinds of things the visual effects business usually spends hours to remove,”
Bredow says.
Natural camera angles were another way in which Surf’s Up was made to feel
like a documentary. The Imageworks crew tried to accurately reproduce the
subtle and unpredictable movements of a hand-held camera, but their efforts
never quite met their high standards for authenticity. So instead they devised a
new live-action camera system – a setup they nicknamed the “HandeeCam” in
homage to the popular Sony video camera – to “shoot” an animated scene. The
camera operator would operate a physical camera while a capture system
recorded its movements which then directed the virtual camera for the actual
shot. To ensure the results had the right feel, they used a Sony DXC-M3A video
camera, the camera of choice for documentary filmmakers 20 years ago. That
model hasn’t been made since 1989, however, so Layout Supervisor James
Williams bought one through eBay.
“This was the first time in an animated movie that the camera motion was
captured from a real camera,” Williams says. “The process worked so well and
looked so good that we eventually used it on most of the movie.”
27
The layout department had to be very creative about the placement of the
camera and the choice of camera lens, just as a live-action crew has to be, but
with the added challenge of making sure all the animated parts melded together
smoothly Once again, the fluid relationship between animation and digital effects
paid off since the backgrounds and environments could be done in cooperation
with the animators.
Even in the lava tubes, Imageworks developed a virtual track for the camera to
travel on separate from those Lani and Cody are zooming down. “The aim of this
sequence was to recreate the thrill and excitement of a roller coaster ride while
still maintaining the feel of a real camera shoot,” Williams explained. “To achieve
this, first the path that Cody and Lani take was roughed out by the layout
department, incorporating all the thrills and spills of the storyboards. Next came
the placement of the camera. In order to make these shots look as natural as
possible, the layout department had to build rough tube shapes that would give
both the characters and the camera a surface to ride on – in other words, the
camera was riding right alongside the characters!”
“The Lava Tubes sequence is one that truly represents what we do with the
camera in CG animation,” producer Christopher Jenkins says. “The sequence is
completely unexpected, which is part of the fun – and as a viewer, you’re on the
journey with Cody and Lani from the moment they fall down the chute.”
Other visual innovations are even more subtle yet just as effective. One was to
simulate a camera in a waterproof housing, which could dip in and out of the
water however the layout artists wanted it to. Another mimics an inexpensive
camera mounted directly on a surfboard, bringing the audience right into the
heart of the action.
Of course, even as Lasaine and his team designed the look of Surf’s Up to be as
real as possible, they also kept in mind that the world they created was populated
28
by penguins (plus the occasional shorebird and chicken). “We asked ourselves,
‘If you were a penguin, what could you build?’ Of course, nothing – you wouldn’t
have any hands. Anything built could not be highly sophisticated. Also, being on
an island, they’ve got limited building materials – rocks, bamboo, leaves, shells,
and wood, and that’s it. As a result, just about all of their buildings are temporary
structures.”
Of course, the animators did get the chance to stretch their creative muscles: on
the Competition Beach – seen only in the background – is a bar built out of the
skeleton of a shark.
“The visual development team gave us an extraordinary environment, full of
color, perception and depth,” says head of layout James Williams. “We first built
3D environment models and then the layout department ‘scouted’ them for shoot
locations.”
Creating the jungle was a particular challenge. “The jungle environments were
the most complex environments in the movie,” Williams says. “Thousands of
plants had to be individually placed in order to make the sets feel organic and
lush. So to prevent characters walking into plants, most of the final set dressing
was done after animation was completed.”
Lasaine says that to achieve this, the design team built a “digital nursery” from
which the animators could mix-and-match trees, flowers, climbing vines, hanging
vines, and ivy. With just five individual plants, the animators could create a living
jungle in which it appeared that every tree was unique.
ABOUT THE MUSIC
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Music plays an important role in any film, and that’s especially true in Surf’s Up.
In making a film about a culture that has always been closely associated with
music, the filmmakers’ first task was to ask themselves what sound would best
suit the story of Cody Maverick.
“We wanted the music to be very much now,” says producer Christopher Jenkins.
“We didn’t want to have any kind of an antiquing quality to the movie. So we
naturally went towards pop, punk, surf, bands like Ms. Lauryn Hill, Green Day,
Incubus – bands that represent that teenage feeling of rebellion and reaching for
something. At the same time, we knew that if we were going to have some
‘historical footage’ in the movie, we could underscore it with music from the era.”
“We are thrilled to be a part of the return of
Ms. Lauryn Hill,” says Liza
Richardson, the music supervisor, who is known to the public as a popular host
on Southern California’s flagship National Public Radio station KCRW. “She has
written and recorded a real summer jam session for Surf's Up that's very
celebratory. Apparently, she related to Big Z's story of reaching the top, checking
out for a while, soul searching, and then reemerging with joy. We're glad to have
her back where she belongs!”
As an example of how songs are used to add power and nuance to the story and
help define the characters, Jenkins points out that Green Day’s “Holiday”
perfectly underscores Cody’s tenacious quality at the beginning of the film, “It
exemplifies his journey in the way that you might imagine young kids might listen
to this song,” he says. “We had been looking for the right song, the right opener,
as we got to know Cody Maverick. As it was getting late in production, I was at
home one evening and my 16-year-old son was playing his guitar, playing along
to a song I didn’t know. I said, ‘That’s a marvelous riff – what is that?’ And he told
me. It was ‘Holiday’ by Green Day. We tried it the next day and we fell in love
with it. From that point on, we had to have that track in the movie.”
30
Different characters, of course, require different kinds of music. “Chicken Joe has
the strangest music – kind of a jungle jazz,” says Jenkins. “We were trying all
kinds of different music and nothing was landing. Liza Richardson, our music
supervisor, was the one who would say, ‘This is good, but we can do better,’ and
she would come up with something really great.”
Richardson was also responsible for getting Sugar Ray to write an original song
for the film. “It really connects,” says Jenkins of the song. “It puts you on the
beach, it makes you feel the sand between your toes and the warm water around
you. It’s the kind of song that gets you into the zone of ‘I’m on vacation and I’m
going to have a great time.’ It’s really cool.”
As he hinted, Big Z also required his own sound. “If he were in the real world, Big
Z would be a 50s kind of surfer,” Jenkins says. “So we thought about surf-guitar
safaris. We also thought about the very laid-back Hawaiian slack-keyed guitar
pieces for Z – and our composer, Mychael Danna, wrote some very cool pieces
for the film.”
Jenkins says that Danna’s score is a key ingredient. “Like his score for ‘Little
Miss Sunshine,’ he writes fantastic, quirky music,” he notes. “He writes for the
characters and for the movie and never gives you the cliché. It’s like looking into
a deep pool – his score has many swirling elements and you can feel them all
coming out. His score is the emotional completion of our characters.”
ABOUT THE CAST
SHIA LABEOUF (Cody Maverick) has quickly become one of Hollywood’s most
sought-after actors. His natural talent and raw energy are earning him a
reputation as one of the most promising young thespians. He can currently be
seen starring in the hit thriller Disturbia for director D.J. Caruso. LaBeouf will
next star in the action-adventure Transformers for director Michael Bay and will
31
soon begin production on the highly anticipated fourth installment in the Indiana
Jones series, opposite Harrison Ford. He most recently appeared in Bobby for
director Emilio Estevez, starring opposite Demi Moore and Elijah Wood.
LaBeouf’s other credits include the lead role in The Greatest Game Ever Played,
about legendary U.S. open golfer Frances Ouimet, and A Guide to Recognizing
Your Saints, co-starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Rosario Dawson.
LaBeouf’s additional feature film credits include Constantine opposite Keanu
Reeves; I, Robot with Will Smith; HBO’s “Project Greenlight” The Battle of
Shaker Heights; and the hit action film Charlie’s Angels®: Full Throttle. LaBeouf
made his big-screen debut in 2003, starring opposite Sigourney Weaver and Jon
Voight in Holes.
On television, LaBeouf garnered much praise from critics everywhere for his
portrayal of Louis Stevens on the Disney Channel’s original series “Even
Stevens.” In 2003, he earned a Daytime Emmy award for Outstanding Performer
in a Children’s Series for his work on the highly rated family show.
JEFF BRIDGES (Big Z) is one of Hollywood’s most successful actors and a fourtime Academy Award® nominee. He earned his first Oscar® nod in 1971 for
Best Supporting Actor in Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show co-starring
Cybill Shepherd. Three years later, he received his second Best Supporting
Actor nomination for his role in Michael Cimino’s Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. In
1984, he landed top kudos with a Best Actor nomination for Starman.
That
performance also earned him a Golden Globe nomination. In 2001, he was
honored with another Golden Globe nomination and his fourth Oscar®
nomination for his role in The Contender, Rod Lurie’s political thriller co-starring
Gary Oldman and Joan Allen, in which Bridges played the President of the
United States.
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Bridges most recently starred in Stick It for Touchstone Pictures. He also reteamed for his second film with director Terry Gilliam, titled Tideland, in which he
plays Noah, a drug addicted, has-been rock guitarist.
Bridges is currently in production on Paramount Pictures’ and Marvel Studios’
big-screen adaptation of Marvel’s legendary Super Hero, Iron Man. The film is
directed by Jon Favreau and will be released May 2, 2008. Bridges just finished
filming A Dog Year for HBO Films/Picturehouse, based on the memoir by Jon
Katz. The film is written and directed by George LaVoo and slated for a 2008
release. He will soon appear in The Amateurs, a comedy written and directed by
Michael Traeger. In that film, citizens of a small town, under the influence of a
man in the midst of a mid-life crisis (Bridges), come together to make an adult
film.
The actor’s multi-faceted career has cut a wide swathe across all genres. He
has starred in numerous box office hits including Gary Ross’ Seabiscuit, Terry
Gilliam’s offbeat comedic drama The Fisher King, the multi-award nominated The
Fabulous Baker Boys, The Jagged Edge, Francis Ford Coppola’s Tucker: The
Man and His Dream, Blown Away, Peter Weir’s Fearless, and Martin Bell’s
American Heart, which earned Bridges an IFP/Spirit Award in 1993 for Best
Actor.
Bridges’ many other acting credits include The Door in the Floor (for which he
earned an IFP/Spirit Award nomination for Best Actor), Arlington Road, The
Muse, Simpatico, the Coen brothers’ cult comedy The Big Lebowski, Ridley
Scott’s White Squall, Walter Hill’s Wild Bill, John Huston’s Fat City, The Mirror
Has Two Faces, K-PAX, Masked and Anonymous, Stay Hungry, Bad Company,
Against All Odds, Cutter’s Way, The Vanishing, Texasville, The Morning After,
Nadine, Rancho Deluxe, See You In the Morning, Eight Million Ways to Die, The
Last American Hero, and Hearts of the West.
33
In 1983, Bridges founded the End Hunger Network, a non-profit organization
dedicated to feeding children around the world. Bridges also produced the End
Hunger televent, a three-hour live television broadcast focusing on educating and
inspiring action to end world hunger.
Through his company, AsIs Productions, he produced “Hidden in America,”
which starred his brother Beau. That television movie, produced for Showtime,
was nominated for two Emmys, a Golden Globe, and a Screen Actors Guild
Award for Beau Bridges.
Current AsIs projects in development include The
Giver, based on Lois Lowry’s Newbery Award-winning novel.
One of Bridges’ true passions is photography.
Bridges’ photos have been
featured in several magazines, including Premiere and Aperture. He has also
had gallery exhibits of his work in New York at the George Eastman House, in
Los Angeles, London, and San Diego. In the fall of 2003, powerHouse Books
published Pictures: Photographs By Jeff Bridges, a hardcover book containing a
compilation of photos taken on numerous film locations over the years, to much
critical acclaim. Proceeds from the book are donated to the Motion Picture &
Television Fund, a non-profit organization that offers charitable care and support
to film-industry workers.
A few years ago, Bridges fulfilled a life-long dream by releasing his first album,
Be Here Soon on Ramp Records, the Santa Barbara, California label he cofounded with Michael McDonald and producer/singer/ songwriter Chris Pelonis.
Bridges, his wife Susan, and their three children divide their time between their
home in Santa Barbara, California and their ranch in Montana.
ZOOEY DESCHANEL (Lani Aliikai) was most recently seen in the Walt Disney
film Bridge to Terabithia, based on the Newberry Award winning children’s novel.
34
She will next be seen in the Warner Bros. film The Assassination of Jesse James
by the Coward Robert Ford, opposite Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck.
Audiences will also see Deschanel star in the independent films Live Free or Die
with Aaron Stanford; Flakes, also with Aaron Stanford, for director Michael
Lehmann; The Go-Getter, with Lou Taylor-Pucci; and The Good Life for
writer/director Stephen Berra. Both The Go-Getter and The Good Life premiered
at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007.
Last year, Deschanel starred in Winter Passing opposite Ed Harris and Will
Ferrell and in Failure to Launch with Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica
Parker.
Her other recent feature film credits include starring roles in the box-office hits
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, with Sam Rockwell, Mos Def, and John
Malkovich, and director Jon Favreau’s Elf, opposite Will Ferrell, for which she
received critical acclaim for her engaging performance and remarkable singing
voice.
She has also starred in All the Real Girls, for which she received an Independent
Spirit Award nomination for Lead Actress; Abandon for director Stephen Gaghan;
Big Trouble for director Barry Sonnenfeld; The Good Girl with Jennifer Aniston;
and Eulogy alongside Debra Winger and Ray Romano.
Deschanel made her feature film debut in 1999 in Lawrence Kasdan’s ensemble
drama Mumford.
She then co-starred with Billy Crudup, Kate Hudson, and
Frances McDormand in Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous.
Deschanel, who was named for the male character in J. D. Salinger’s Franny and
Zooey, spent much of her childhood on location with her actress mother, Mary Jo
Deschanel, and her father Caleb Deschanel, an Academy Award®-nominated
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cinematographer. She credits her father with instilling in her a keen visual sense
and great style.
JON HEDER (Chicken Joe) became an overnight sensation and gained an
instant cult following with his feature film debut in the title role of the offbeat
comedy Napoleon Dynamite. Heder’s endearing portrayal of the somewhat nerdy
high schooler who helps his friend Pedro get elected student body president was
a huge financial success and brought him two MTV Movie Awards, one in the
category of Breakthrough Male and a second for Best Musical Performance for
his crowd-pleasing election night dance. Heder met Napoleon Dynamite director
Jared Hess while both were studying film at Brigham Young University, The
director first cast him in his short film, Peluca.
In Surf’s Up, Heder returns to animation after previously voicing a role in
Columbia Pictures’ Monster House. Onscreen, he most recently starred opposite
Will Ferrell in the hit comedy Blades of Glory, which has taken in over $100
million at the box office. In November, he will star in Mama’s Boy opposite Diane
Keaton and Jeff Daniels.
Heder also starred in the feature films The Benchwarmers and School for
Scoundrels.
Late last year, it was announced that Heder, along with his twin brother Dan and
older brother Doug, have formed production company Greasy Entertainment with
a first-look deal at Universal Pictures. The realization of a long-held goal for the
brothers, who all studied film at BYU, the company is developing feature film
properties, both live-action and animation (Heder and his twin brother both
studied computer animation in college).
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JAMES WOODS (Reggie Belafonte) has been impressing audiences for over
three decades with his compelling performances. He has moved effortlessly from
big box office studio films to festival-celebrated independent features, in a wide
spectrum from comedy to drama. Woods was also just seen in Pretty Persuasion
and the outrageous comedy Be Cool, the sequel to Get Shorty. He currently
stars on the hit CBS television series “Shark.”
The son of a US Intelligence officer, he earned a scholarship to the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, completed a degree in political science,
and then headed off to New York to pursue a career on the stage. After
appearing in a handful of New York City theater productions, Woods landed his
first film role in All the way Home and followed that up with supporting roles in
The Way We Were, and The Choirboys. However, it was Woods cold blooded
performance as the cop killer in The Onion Field that captured both audiences
and critics’ attention.
Other film work includes Once Upon a Time in America, Salvador, Casino, Nixon,
John Q, The Virgin Suicides, Riding in Cars with Boys, Northfolk, Contact, Any
Given Sunday, and Scary Movie 2. Woods has also starred on television in
numerous projects, including “The Rudy Giuliani Story,” “Indictment: The
McMartin Trial,” “Citizen Cohn,” “My Name is Bill W.,” and “Promise,” all roles
that earned him an Emmy Award or nomination.
Among his numerous stage, screen, and television awards, Woods has received
Oscar® nominations for his work in Salvador and Ghosts of Mississippi. He was
honored with the Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a MiniSeries or Motion Picture Made for TV for his performance in “In Love and War”;
he has been nominated for eight other Golden Globes.
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New York stage actor and stand-up comedian MARIO CANTONE (Mikey
Abromowitz), gained critical-acclaim with the Tony-nominated “Laugh Whore”
from its sold out run at the Cort Theatre on Broadway to the Showtime Networks
special. The previous theater season saw Cantone starring in the Tony-winning
“Assassins” by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman. Both hit shows were
directed by four-time Tony-winner Joe Mantello.
An accomplished stage actor, Cantone has appeared on Broadway in the role of
Buzz in Terrence McNally’s award-winning dramatic comedy “Love! Valor!
Compassion!” and Stephano in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” at the Public
Theater. Off Broadway, Cantone was the original Terry in “The Crumple Zone,”
Benny in “June Moon,” and Grumio in the Shakespeare in the Park production of
“Taming of the Shrew.”
Cantone recently appeared in the hilarious film The Aristocrats. On television,
Cantone went syndicated as Charlotte’s wedding-planner-with-attitude when
“Sex and the City” was launched on TBS and audiences can catch his frequent
stints on “The View.” On Comedy Central, Cantone’s performances have been
featured on “The USO Comedy Tour,” “Chappelle’s Show,” and “Premium
Blend,” as well as his own special, “Comedy Central Presents: Mario Cantone.”
Cantone has performed his irreverent stand-up comedy at a wide range of
venues including Carnegie Hall, where he warmed up for jazz great Shirley
Bassey, to performances at Resorts Atlantic City and Caroline’s on Broadway.
Peter Marks of The New York Times wrote of his work, “In the realm of
outrageously joyful stand-up, there is the shrieking, windup-toy sensibility of
Mario Cantone, a comedian of extravagant tantrums and extravagant gifts...he is
a proponent of the comedy of outrage.” Over the years his routines have included
musical parodies of Judy Garland, Jim Morrison, Peggy Lee, Bruce Springsteen,
and Liza Minnelli.
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Cantone got his start hosting the local New York children’s show, “Steampipe
Alley,” where the comic slipped in sly pop culture innuendo that adults could
enjoy. His other television credits include appearances on “Late Night with David
Letterman,” “Martha,” “The Rosie O’Donnell Show,” and NBC’s “Ed.” The actor
was also featured in the films Quiz Show and Mousetrap. Mr. Cantone’s other
film credits include Crooked Lines (Cannes 2003) and Last Request.
DIEDRICH BADER (Tank Evans) is best-known for his role on the hit television
series “The Drew Carey Show.” Bader played Oswald Lee Harvey from 1995
until the show’s completion in 2004.
Bader was born in Alexandria, Virginia, but at age two moved to Paris with his
family. He returned to the United States for high school and attended North
Carolina School of the Arts. During spring break he was discovered by a casting
director in Santa Fe, New Mexico. That meeting led to an audition for a small role
in a pilot; Bader landed a starring role instead. He moved to Los Angeles and
auditioned for other roles, landing guest spots on several series, including “Star
Trek: The Next Generation,” “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air,” “Cheers,” and
“Quantum Leap.”
Filmmaker Penelope Spheeris hired Bader for her action-
adventure spoof series “Danger Theatre” and again for the feature film The
Beverly Hillbillies, in which Bader played the dual role of twins Jethro and
Jethrine.
Since rising to prominence on “The Drew Carey Show,” the versatile performer
has voiced characters in such animated films as Dinotopia: Curse of the Ruby
Sunstone, The Country Bears, and Ice Age, and in many animated series,
including “Lloyd in Space,” “The Zeta Project” (as Zeta and Zee), and “Buzz
Lightyear of Star Command” (as Warp Darkmatter). Bader has also appeared in
such films as Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous, Napoleon Dynamite,
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Office Space, Eurotrip, and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. He will next be seen
in the upcoming Balls of Fury.
ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS
ASH BRANNON (Director/Screenplay) is a well-known creative force in the world
of animation.
He previously made his mark as co-director and co-developer of Pixar Animation
Studio’s 1999 hit feature film Toy Story 2, to which he also contributed his talents
as an animator and character designer. Brannon also served as story artist on
Pixar’s A Bug’s Life and directing animator on the studio’s first feature, Toy Story.
Brannon’s earlier career helped him acquire a broad range of experiences. He
was an animator on the compilation TV series “That’s Warner Bros.!” for Warner
Bros. Animation; contributed to Nike’s groundbreaking “Hare Jordan” Super Bowl
spot’ and honed his craft on Walt Disney Productions’ The Little Mermaid.
After studying at CalArts’ Character Animation Program, Brannon taught
animation there for two years.
CHRIS BUCK (Director/Screenplay) has been a major creative force in the world
of animation for over two decades.
He most recently worked on Walt Disney Pictures’ 2004 feature Home on the
Range as a supervising animator. Before that, Buck made his feature directing
debut with Disney’s blockbuster animated feature, Tarzan.
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Buck’s other credits at Disney include the 1995 animated feature Pocahontas, on
which he oversaw the animation of three central characters: Percy, Grandmother
Willow and Wiggins. Buck also helped design characters for the 1989 animated
blockbuster The Little Mermaid, performed experimental animation for The
Rescuers Down Under and Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and was an animator
on The Fox and the Hound.
His career also has included a stint at Hyperion Pictures, where Buck helped
develop several films and served as a directing animator on the feature Bebe’s
Kids.
He joined creative forces with director Tim Burton to help storyboard
Disney’s live-action featurette Frankenweenie and worked with Burton again as
directing animator on the Brad Bird-directed “Family Dog” episode of Steven
Spielberg’s “Amazing Stories” and as director of the subsequent primetime
animated series.
Additionally, Buck’s credits include a number of animated commercials (including
some with the Keebler Elves) for such Los Angeles-based production entities as
Film Fair, Kurtz & Friends, and Duck Soup.
A native of Wichita, Kansas, Buck studied character animation for two years at
CalArts, where he also taught from 1988-1993.
CHRISTOPHER JENKINS (Producer/Story/Screenplay) has contributed his
talents to an impressive roster of projects during his 20-year career.
Before taking on the story of Cody Maverick and his fellow surfing penguins,
Jenkins spent most of his professional life at Walt Disney Pictures where he
served as artistic coordinator on Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Before that, Jenkins
was visual effects supervisor on The Hunchback of Notre Dame and supervising
effects animator/designer on Pocahontas, positions that were central to the
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overall look and atmosphere of those popular movies. He also was an effects
animator on Hercules, The Lion King, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, The Little
Mermaid, and Touchstone Pictures’ Who Framed Roger Rabbit?.
A native of Wales, Jenkins has a degree in scientific illustration from Middlesex
University in England.
DON RHYMER (Screenplay), has written and produced numerous sitcoms
including “Coach,” “The Hogan Family,” “Evening Shade,” “Hearts Afire,” and
“Caroline in the City.”
He also wrote and executive produced television movies for the Disney Channel
and ABC before moving to features, for which his credits include Carpool, Big
Momma’s House, The Santa Clause 2, Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination
London, The Honeymooners, Big Momma’s House 2, and the upcoming Alvin
and the Chipmunks.
Rhymer is a graduate of James Madison University in Virginia.
CHRISTIAN DARREN (Story) previously wrote the teleplay “Hustle: The Pete
Rose Story” for ESPN and the television series “Something is Out There.” He is
currently writing the feature film Six Bullets from Now.
MYCHAEL DANNA (Music by) has been scoring films since his 1987 feature
debut on Atom Egoyan’s Family Viewing, for which Danna earned the first of his
13 Canadian film award nominations. Danna is recognized as one of the
pioneers in combining non-Western sound sources with orchestral and electronic
minimalism in film music.
This reputation has led him to work with such
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acclaimed directors as Egoyan, Scott Hicks, Ang Lee, Gillies MacKinnon, James
Mangold, Mira Nair, Billy Ray, Joel Schumacher, and Denzel Washington.
Danna studied music composition at the University of Toronto, winning the Glenn
Gould Composition Scholarship in 1985. Danna also served for five years as
composer-in-residence at the McLaughlin Planetarium in Toronto. His work for
dance includes music for “Dead Souls” (Carbone Quatorze Dance Company,
directed by Gilles Maheu) and a score for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s “Gita
Govind,” based on the 1,000-year-old classical Indian erotic poem, with
choreographer Nina Menon.
His recent projects include Gregory Hoblit’s Fracture, Billy Ray’s Breach,
Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’s Little Miss Sunshine, Bennett Miller’s
Capote, Terry Gilliam’s Tideland, and Todd Robinson’s Lonely Hearts.
Every Saturday night, LIZA RICHARDSON’s (Music Supervisor) radio show “The
Drop” on 89.9 KCRW rises like the tide, waxes and wanes like the moon, and
pulses with beats, storms, and sonic swells. She mixes hip hop-rock-reggae,
dub-disco-punk, hi-tech and lo-fi funk, and world flavored party music as she
surfs the airwaves of L.A.
During the week, Richardson is a music supervisor and consultant with credits
including NBC’s critically acclaimed “Friday Night Lights,” the feature films Lords
of Dogtown, Y Tu Mama Tambien (for which she was nominated for a Grammy),
Nacho Libre, Failure to Launch, and Wicker Park, and some of the early iPod
spots. Since her passion is surfing, it’s fitting that she found a dream job working
on Surf’s Up.
In February 2007, Richardson became the Academy Awards’ first-ever DJ.
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Whether she’s moving on the air, in the water, or through life, Richardson says
she goes with the flow.
SONY PICTURES ANIMATION identifies and nurtures fresh voices and dynamic
visions in the world of CG animated features for Sony Pictures Entertainment,
under the leadership of Sandra Rabins, Executive Vice President of Sony
Pictures Animation.
Having achieved success with its debut title, Open Season, Sony Pictures
Animation currently has a full slate of films set for release including Surf’s Up,
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Hotel Transylvania.
The character animation artists and visual effects wizards at the Academy
Award®-winning Sony Pictures Imageworks provide all CG animation for Sony
Pictures Animation. Sony Pictures Animation and Sony Pictures Imageworks are
part of Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment, led by Yair Landau, President of
Sony Pictures Digital and Vice Chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment.
SONY PICTURES IMAGEWORKS INC. is an Academy Award®-winning, stateof-the-art visual effects and character animation company dedicated to the art
and artistry of digital production and character creation. The company has been
recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with Oscars®
for its work on Spider-Man™ 2 and the CG animated short film The
ChubbChubbs!, as well as nominations for Superman Returns, Monster House,
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Spider-Man™,
Hollow Man, Stuart Little, and Starship Troopers. Imageworks continues to raise
the level in the visual effects and character animation industry, becoming a major
force by providing leading edge technology to its world-class artists.
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Imageworks is a division of Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment, which oversees
the digital production and online entertainment assets of Sony Pictures
Entertainment.
“ACADEMY AWARD®” and “OSCAR®” are the registered trademarks and
service marks of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
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